Elizabeth Bradfield

Five-Year Checkup, 2017

Is it different? Do you notice? Do you see? Really they’re asking, Have I missed it? I don’t know. Less snow this season. More humpbacks maybe because less ice and thus the Minkes elsewhere. More fur seals and, thanks to less rats, more pipits. Gentoos nudging Adelies out. This year: a slurry of salps at Paradise, Pt. Wild, & Deception. We gawk at tabular bergs, awed, unsure if it’s ok to find them beautiful. The big picture? We chug along. I’m no gauge, my stick too short to measure true. But I’ve seen the colorful maps. Why do you need me to say it? It’s red where we sail.

[5] As temperatures rise in the Antarctic, Gentoo penguins have expanded their range while Adelies have declined in many areas. Salps in the Southern Ocean, specifically Salpa thompsoni, have attracted the attention of climate change scientists. Recently, they have been increasing in numbers, while krill have been decreasing. This is of concern because it indicates a potential regimen shift, and because salps have much less nutritional value than krill, which power the Antarctic food web.

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Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of the poetry collections Once Removed, Approaching Ice, and Interpretive Work. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, West Branch, Orion and many anthologies. She has been awarded a Stegner Fellowship, the Audre Lorde Prize, and was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press, she lives on Cape Cod, works as a naturalist locally as well as on expedition ships in the polar regions, and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University.http://www.ebradfield.com